Who's in the running for Best Picture at the Oscars 2017?

Rousing and crowd-pleasing La La Land

La La Land began with a crazy dream for writer-director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash), who also received a nomination for his direction and original screenplay. Chazelle wanted to see if he could make a film that channels the magic and energy of the most poignantly romantic French and American musicals of film making’s Golden Age … into our more complicated and jaded age.

Boy meets girl meets the up-ending aspirations of the city of stars – and they all break out of the conventions of everyday life as La La Land takes off on an exuberant song-and-dance journey through a life-changing love affair between a jazz pianist and a hopeful actress. At once an ode to the glamour and emotion of cinema classics, this love letter to the Los Angeles of unabated dreams, and a distinctly modern romance is a sure favourite.

The film also received nominations for Damien Chazelle for his direction and original screenplay, actor (Ryan Gosling), actress (Emma Stone), cinematography, film editing, sound editing, sound mixing, production design, costume design, original score, best original songs: Audition (The Fools Who Dream) and City of Stars.

Spellbinding Arrival

When mysterious spacecraft touch down across the globe, an elite team are brought together to investigate in Arrival, a provocative science fiction thriller from acclaimed director Denis Villeneuve.

“I’ve dreamed of doing science fiction since I was ten years old,” says Villeneuve, who fell deeply in love with the short story Arrival is based upon, Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life. “It’s a genre that I feel has a lot of power and the tools to explore our reality in a very dynamic way.”

“This movie is about a growing understanding of our place in the cycle of the universe… It explores, inside of that, communication and time. What time means, if it exists, and if all we have is the present moment.”

The film also received nominations for Denis Villeneuve for his direction and screenplay adaptation, cinematography, film editing, production design, sound mixing and sound editing.

Provocative and endearing Moonlight

Moonlight is a consummate masterwork from writer-director Barry Jenkins, that takes you on an emotional journey into the heart and soul of humanity and will live in your heart forever. An unforgettable and not-to-be missed drama at the intersection of race, sexuality, masculinity, identity, family, and love, the film arrives eight years after Jenkins’ critically acclaimed romance Medicine For Melancholy, bringing audiences a deeply felt cinematic swoon, following one young man’s tumultuous coming age in South Florida over the course of two decades.

Ultimately, Moonlight is a universal story of love, family and reconciliation, which through its electrifying atmosphere comes to liberate anyone who has ever felt distinct or apart, or has felt trapped inside their own emotions, yearning for change. Sums up Jenkins: “This is an immersive, experiential film in which characters over time negotiate what they will allow themselves to feel. What they project back to the world with those feelings becomes the universal process of claiming one’s identity. It’s amazing to watch someone yearn for something internally, but not have the courage to express it.” Moonlight is an expression of that yearning.

Moonlight also received Oscar nominations for Barry Jenkins for his direction and screenplay adaptation, supporting actor (Mahershala Ali), supporting actress (Naomie Harris), cinematography, film editing, and original score.

Gut-wrenching and visceral Hacksaw Ridge

The compelling and brutally honest story of the first conscientious objector to win the medal of honor. Desmond Doss was the only American soldier in WWII to fight on the front lines without a weapon in Okinawa during the bloodiest battle of WWII, where he saved 75 men without firing or carrying a gun as he believed that while the war was justified, killing was nevertheless wrong. As an army medic, he single-handedly evacuated the wounded from behind enemy lines, braved fire while tending to soldiers and was wounded by a grenade and hit by snipers. Doss was the first conscientious objector awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

“Desmond Doss was singular,” says director Mel Gibson. “There are few, if any people, who could or would replicate his actions. The humility he maintained in discussing his heroics is a testament to the mettle of the man. In fact, Desmond was asked permission for years to adapt his story into a film, and repeatedly declined, insisting that the “real heroes” were the ones in the ground. In a cinematic landscape overrun with fictional “superheroes,” I thought it was time to celebrate a real one.”

The film also received Oscar nominations for best director (Mel Gibson), actor (Andrew Garfield), film editing, sound editing, and sound mixing.

Profound and poignant Lion

The incredible true story of Indian-born Australian Saroo Brierley and his unwavering determination to find his lost family and finally return to his first home was realised in all its splendour by director Garth Davis.

“You couldn’t make Saroo’s story up, it’s so extraordinary. It has all of the stuff of great cinema – it has adventure and peril, it traverses continents, it travels across time. And his journey is deeply, deeply emotional. What also makes it incredibly cinematic is that the story is so ultimately satisfying. After years of being without his biological family and years of searching he actually, amazingly, like a needle in a haystack, found his way home.”

Lion also received Oscar nominations for best supporting actor (Dev Patel), supporting actress (Nicole Kidman), screenplay adaptation (Luke Davies), cinematography and original score.

Heart-breaking Manchester by the Sea

Manchester by the Sea tells the story of the Chandler family, a working class family from Massachusetts. After Lee’s (Casey Affleck) older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) suddenly passes away, he is made the legal guardian of his nephew (Lucas Hedges). Lee is forced to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and the community where he was born and raised.

“You never know why you write about the things you end up writing about,” says writer-director Kenneth Lonergan.

‘’I suspect that the impetus to create anything is too specifically rooted in the artists’ personal psychology to be of much interest to anybody else, but you hope the results will be. My favourite part of filmmaking is the process whereby a story initially developed in the privacy of your own imagination becomes the emotional property of other people. The story is nurtured and made to blossom under the care, emotions, and ideas of your collaborators. It becomes a kind of shared fantasy belonging to all of them, until it is finally passed along to an audience where -­ you hope ‐ it becomes a part of their inner life, the way the movies I love have become a part of me.’’

Manchester by the Sea also received Oscar nominations for Kenneth Lonergan for his direction and original screenplay, best actor (Casey Affleck), supporting actor (Lucas Hedges), supporting actress (Michelle Williams) and original screenplay.

Fences, a stirring human drama

Two-time Academy Award-winning Denzel Washington co-produced, directs and stars in this emotionally stirring adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

Theatre buffs will delight in the potent big screen adaptation driven by crackling dialogue and strong characters, allowing us to take an emotional journey into the lives of bruised souls seeking ultimate redemption.

It tells the story of Troy Maxson, a mid-century Pittsburgh sanitation worker who once dreamed of a baseball career, but was too old when the major leagues began admitting black players. He tries to be a good husband and father, but his lost dream of glory eats at him, and causes him to make a decision that threatens to tear his family apart.

Fences also received Oscar nominations for best actor (Denzel Washington), supporting actress (Viola Davis) and August Wilson’s screenplay adaptation.

Refreshing Hell or High Water

Ben Foster and Chris Pine star as bank-robbing brothers, holding-up the very banks that are threatening to take away their land. On their trail, two Texas Marshalls (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham) investigate the robberies, seeking to bring the culprits to justice.

Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan set out to make a “buddy road film which was also a heist thriller, with elements of the inevitable showdown of a western with some of the real consequences of the flawed characters of a real drama,” he said. “I wanted it to feel real. I didn’t want the movie to end and for everyone to go home and forget about it. For me, the greatest thing a movie can do is rivet you while you’re watching, but also give you something to chew on for days and weeks after you’ve seen it. And give you ideas to think about. And maybe show you a bit of yourself you really like or don’t like, and maybe you’re going to effect a little change without the burden of having to experience the lesson.”

Hell or High Water also received Oscar nominations for best supporting actor (Jeff Bridges), Taylor Sheridan’s original screenplay, and film editing.

Delightfully humorous Hidden Figures

Uncovering the incredible, untold yet true story of a brilliant group of women who changed the foundations of the country for the better - by aiming for the stars. The film recounts the vital history of an elite team of black female mathematicians at NASA who helped win the all-out space race against America’s rivals in the Soviet Union and, at the same time, sent the quest for equal rights and opportunity rocketing forwards.

It brings the women’s rise to the top ranks of aerospace in the thrilling early days of NASA to life via a fast-moving, humour-filled, inspiring entertainment that illuminates both the gutsy quest for Earth’s first, seemingly impossible orbital flight and also the powerful things that can result when women unite.

For all its joys and triumphs, Hidden Figures is also a film that takes place at the crossroads of the most defining struggles in American history: the evolving fight for Civil Rights; the battle to win the high-stakes Cold War without risking nuclear war and be the first superpower to establish a human presence outside planet Earth; and the ongoing drive to show how the mind-boggling technological breakthroughs that create the world’s future have nothing to do with gender or background.

Hidden Figures also received Oscar nominations for best supporting actress (Octavia Spencer) and screenplay adaptation which director Theodore Melfi co-wrote with Allison Schroeder, based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly.

Read more about these Oscar nominated films: www.writingstudio.co.za